Real Balance in the Budget

As the fight over the federal budget starts to heat up, it is important that decisions about what programs should be funded and what departments can have their budgets safely reduced be made on a rational basis. Neo-cons tell us that governments should be run “like a business” (except, of course, they have no issue with businesses borrowing money) and that expenses should be ‘justified’.

In that spirit, I suggest that the total Colonization Budget (consisting of most of the Department of Defense budget, recent Emergency Supplemental Appropriations, nuclear weapons funds in the Department of Energy and various military expenses mis-labeled as “foreign aid“) is ripe for drastic cuts. They fail the neo-con test as they are both inefficient and ineffective.

Such expenses are grossly inefficient, even compared to general government spending. Military spending is crammed full of ‘pork’ (a polite way of saying “corporate welfare“) justified as indirect job creation programs; despite right-wing arguments that governments should not spend money on the basis of how many jobs it creates but on meeting actual needs. These expenditures are greater than the military budgets of the rest of the world combined. ‘Pure military spending’ by the US represented over 46% of the world total as of 2009 according to research presented at www.globalissues.org – adding in military aid disguised as “foreign aid” and the US is probably spending as much, if not more than, the rest of the world on military efforts.

In addition, all such spending is ineffective; as recent events in Egypt and elsewhere show, people will fight for democratic reforms when they are ready, and as shown in Mesopotamia they will fight against them when they aren’t. Regardless of how many billions of US taxpayer dollars are spent. Either the ‘radical left’ is correct that spending on peaceful efforts such as fighting disease and poverty around the world will win us friends, and make the world a safer place, or else the ‘rabid right’ is correct that the rest of the world hates us and no amount of aid will win their hearts and minds. Either way, military colonialism will never be effective in the long run.

Continuing to allocate such a huge amount of funds to such efforts is a clear violation of your fiduciary duty; it is a demonstrable waste of the people’s money. You know, funds that politicians all say government should not be spending unnecessarily. Further, to continue such war-mongering is to risk permanent damage to “the general Welfare” in direct violation of the Constitution you have all sworn to uphold. De-funding domestic programs that aid we, the people will inevitably disrupt the general welfare while colonizing behaviour that justifiably antagonizes other peoples presents unnecessary risks to domestic tranquility.

It is time to spend wisely, based on the needs of we, the people.

Update: After I posted this, I was advised of the following commercial that has begun airing in DC: